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Are these lost books of the Bible?
There is much talk these days
about lost books of the Bible. From cults to the New Age, people make all sorts of
claims about how the Bible is missing books, books that help justify what they hope to
believe. Sometimes people claim that the Bible was edited to take out reincarnation,
or the teaching of higher planes of existence, or different gods, or ancestor worship, or
"at-one-ment" with nature.
The "lost books" were never lost. They were known
by the Jews in Old Testament times and the Christians of the New Testament times and were
never considered scripture. They weren't lost nor were they removed. They were
never in the Bible in the first place.
The additional books were not included in the Bible for several
reasons. They lacked apostolic or prophetic authorship, they did not claim to be the
Word of God; they contain unbiblical concepts such as prayer for the dead in 2 Macc.
12:45-46; or have some serious historical inaccuracies.
Nevertheless, the Roman Catholic church has added certain books
to the canon of scripture. In 1546, largely due in response to the Reformation, the
Roman Catholic church authorized several more books as scripture known as the apocrypha.
The word apocrypha means hidden. It is used in a general sense to describe a list
of books written by Jews between 300 and 100 B.C. More specifically, it is used of the 7
additional books accepted by the Catholic church as being inspired. The entire list of
books of the apocrypha are: 1 and 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, the Rest of Esther, the Wisdom
of Solomon, Sirach, (also titled Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, The Letter of Jeremiah, Song of
the Three Young Men, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, The Additions to Daniel, The Prayer of
Manasseh, and 1 and 2 Maccabees. The books accepted as inspired and included in the
Catholic Bible are Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees Wisdom of Solomon Sirach (also known
as Ecclesiasticus), and Baruch
The Pseudepigraphal books are "false writings."
They are a collection of early Jewish and "Christian" writings composed between
200 BC and AD 200. However, they too were known and were never considered scripture.
The deuterocanonical (apocrypha) books are those books that were
included in the Greek Septuagint (LXX) but not included in the Hebrew Bible. The
recognized deuterocanonical books are "Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon,
Ecclesiasticus (also called Sirach or Ben Sira), Baruch (including the Letter of
Jeremiah), 1 and 2 Maccabees, and additions to the books of Esther and Daniel. The canon
of the Greek Orthodox community also includes 1 Esdras, the Prayer of Manasseh, Psalm 151,
and 3 Maccabees, with 4 Maccabees as an appendix."
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1. Achtemeier,
Paul J., Th.D., Harper’s Bible Dictionary,
(San Francisco: Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc.) 1985.